rfid

A new type of wireless sensor can run entirely off ambient energy and be reprogrammed in the field. It’s a breakthrough for this type of device and could lead to major advances in wearable and wireless computing.

President Obama has ordered multiple departments of the government to evaluate and recommend so-called “smart gun” technologies for their suitability for deployment and use. Such technologies have been in development for decades — could this kickstart the development of solutions gun owners actually want to use?

The more we use devices to store and access sensitive data, the more layers of protection are needed. In this case, Symantec, makers of the famed Norton brand, are adding a physical layer of protection: pants.

There’s a new company in town that wants to replace your credit, debit, and store cards with a single digital “meta” card: The unpronounceable and probably-conceived-during-a-drunken-game-of-scrabble Plastc. The Plastc Card is the same size and thickness (0.8mm) as a credit card, but it manages to pack in a battery, e-ink display, NFC, and other high-tech features, along with the usual magnetic strip.

We already use dogs and monkeys as service animals to help people with disabilities, so why not use robots as well? Researchers at Georgia Tech have combined RFID tags, long-distance scanners, and a self-propelled robot to develop a method of reliably locating objects in a real-world setting. With this set-up, people with reduced mobility or short-term memory can ask the robot for help finding important items like medicine or documents.

Despite Apple’s impending release of a supposed iWatch, the non-phone smart device industry hasn’t yet taken off. Gun company Armatix hopes to take the smart device industry by storm with its new smart gun system.

It’s crazy, but one of the most dangerous things you can do is visit the hospital. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates that nearly two million hospital patients contract a healthcare-associated infection (HAI) every year, and 90,000 of those HAIs result in death. These infections, such as MRSA, are caused by bacteria being transferred from patient to patient, usually via a doctor or nurse. Hand washing is by far the simplest solution to these 90,000 unnecessary deaths, but getting healthcare professionals to reliably wash their hands has proven to be difficult. This is where IBM and its low-power mote technology (LMT) comes in.

In modern times, a portable storage device isn’t far from our possession. Either we can use the storage on our phones or tablets, or we keep a small flash drive on a keychain. Accessing the data, however, may not be convenient in a given situation. Making the storage and access of data more convenient, artist Anthony Antonellis implanted an RFID chip into his hand that can store data which can be wirelessly accessed by a smartphone.

Researchers have created a new method of wireless networking that allows devices to communicate with each other without batteries or their own source of power. Dubbed “ambient backscatter,” this method sucks power out of the air from TV and cellular transmissions, and then modulates this signal with its own data. These modulated signals are then picked up by other devices in the same ambient backscatter network. In theory, this could be the breakthrough to finally allow for a ubiquitous internet of things, where every location is blanketed with devices and sensors that communicate with each other, creating truly smart homes, offices, and cities.

Physical legal tender has both benefits and drawbacks. One of the major benefits is that you can use it at establishments that don’t accept credit or debit, which are surprisingly frequent if you live in a big city. Some major drawbacks are that it’s more difficult to trace and much easier to steal than electronic funds. Those two drawbacks are on the verge of being remedied, though, as a team of American scientists has created paper equipped with RFID tags, making any paper money easily traceable.

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